The biennial event, whose location this time around is the Colorado Golf Club in Parker, pits the top American female golfers against their European counterparts in match play.

Golf-course development exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s with 98 new clubs opening along the Front Range and in mountain resorts. The projects were fueled by a seemingly insatiable appetite from affluent buyers attracted by the cachet of homes hugging the fairways.

But even faster than the boom, the industry skidded to an abrupt halt when the bottom dropped out of the real-estate market.

"The industry became overbuilt," said Jim McLaughlin, senior vice president of golf-course management firm Troon Golf. "It was anticipating new demand that never materialized. These are tough times for a lot of clubs and developers."

Photos: Golf

"There's just not enough money out there to go around and sustain all of these clubs," said Ed Mate, executive director of the Colorado Golf Association. "Either the industry needs to find a new source of demand, or we will continue to have a lot of casualties."

Public courses also have been hit by the slowdown, but not as dramatically as private clubs.

The fallout has afflicted some of Colorado's most prestigious clubs, including the 81-year-old Green Gables Country Club in Jefferson County, which closed in 2011 under the burden of declining revenue and rising operating costs.

Ravenna in Douglas County, intended to be an exclusive golf and residential enclave in Waterton Canyon, has gone through a series of financial setbacks. The development recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans next year — eight years after the course opened in 2006 — to begin construction of a clubhouse and swimming pool.

Eagle County's Cordillera resort has gone through years of financial struggles, including a bankruptcy filing. Now restructured and under the management of Troon Golf, membership has begun to rise and all three of the club's golf courses are open, compared with just one last year.

In Trinidad, the Cougar Canyon Golf Resort opened in 2007 and was named a top Colorado course by Golf and Golfweek magazines. But real-estate sales never took off. The Jack Nicklaus-designed course is now closed and its proposed 117-room hotel, spa and conference center sits empty and only partially built.

Parker's Colorado Golf Club came close to experiencing a similar fate.

The club opened in 2006 to rave reviews and was host to the prestigious Senior PGA tournament in 2010, but the event took place with an unfinished clubhouse behind a chain-link construction fence that raised the eyebrows of golfers and PGA officials.

Like other new private clubs, real-estate and membership sales were far below projected levels.

"In 2011, we actually came within several days of closing the doors," said general manager Marshal Brereton.

But the club survived when 35 members agreed to put up $7.5 million to buy the property from its original developers, CGC Holdings.

Membership now has grown to about 300. Real-estate sales are beginning to pick up. The clubhouse is completed.

The Solheim Cup produces documented economic benefits to its host golf clubs and cities, said Kelly Hyne, vice president of LPGA Properties.

"We know there's an effect," she said. "People experience these (golf clubs), they love them and it leaves a lasting impression with them."

When the last Solheim Cup in the U.S. was held in 2009, at Rich Harvest Farms in suburban Chicago, membership at the small club increased from 62 to 85 within one year of the tournament. Cup attendance of 120,000 generated $19.4 million in economic impact.

Officials said they expect similar attendance and resulting impact this year.

Tom Ferrell, director of membership and marketing at Colorado Golf Club, said the course's acclaimed design and panoramic views of the Front Range are likely to produce a favorable impression for Colorado's golf industry. And certainly for the club itself.

"Once people get a taste of it," he said, "they will want to be here."